


So a round bale falls on you the other day...

by Sionnan



Category: Letterkenny (TV)
Genre: Gen, farm related injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-11 01:10:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15304110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sionnan/pseuds/Sionnan
Summary: Summertime means haying. Of course, no haying is complete if there isn't some kind of dire incident. Wayne gets half a hay bale landed atop him.





	So a round bale falls on you the other day...

Wayne's ribs are busted and the doctor says it's a near miracle his back's not broken when half a round bale slides out of the baler, lands atop him and rolls off.

Standing in the hay field, Daryl and Dan are so shocked that the silence is thunderous. Then Wayne gives a weak wail like a new born calf, and Daryl's heart jumps in his throat, and he scrambles over the raked rows of hay over to the flattened section of grass and leans over his friend. "Holy fuck, Wayne!"

Wayne is on his back, and his chest is hitching awfully, and he only gives a gargled moan, with a cough tacked on the end. Dan is sputtering, "Call Katy!" like he couldn't pull out his own phone and do it himself.

So Daryl, swearing under his breath and nearly dancing in place with anxiety, whips out his phone and dials up Katy.

"Does he need mouth to mouth?" comes Dan's voice ten feet over, and Wayne gives a strangled sob, and Daryl almost wishes this was one of those accidents where the person passes out immediately, because he hates the way Wayne's face is pale mottled with dark red spots.

"'Lo?" Katy's phone voice is a mix of distraction and irritation.

"Katy!" Daryl's voice is nearly a shriek. "Wayne just got fucking plowed by a hay bale, call a fuckin' ambulance!"

"What?!" Katy's voice is immediately piercing. "Where is he?! Why didn't you call a fucking ambulance?"

"Fuck! Just-!"

"What field are you in?!"

"Rear field!"

"Fuck." Katy hangs up. 

Wayne's face is now only pale, and his breathing has shallowed considerably. His eyes are starting to drift towards the top of his skull, so Darry bends over and tries coaxing Wayne back to consciousness with a saccharine tone that he recognizes from talking to wounded animals.

"A'right Wayne, c'mon buddy, you keep your eyes open now, hear?"

Dan has come closer, big hands over his mouth. "Should I prop his head?"

"Don't. Fucking touch him, his fuckin' head might pop off you try to pick it up." 

From the field road, they can hear the roar of a Jeep, and Darry looks over to see the Jeep the hockey players that Katy hangs out with ripping across the field, three figures inside. Darry starts jumping and waving, like this is on the side of some isolated beach in the Pacific and not the middle of a flat hayfield in Letterkenny.

At his feet, Wayne gives a strange, small gasped choke, and Darry looks down to see Wayne totally out, a bit of blood on his lip. It's the blood that suddenly hits Darry, and that strange cold washes over him. "Wayne?"

The Jeep skids to a halt fifteen feet from them, and Katy is out of the Jeep and tearing over faster than either of her hockey player toys. She drops to her knees, hands briefly framing but not touching Wayne's head, too afraid to compound the damage. Two slender figures touch his neck, and after a second she fetches a sigh of relief.

"Jonesy, grab the tarp from the back!" She yells, and reaches over her brother's body to start poking like a bird at his body. 

"I didn't see no blood," Dan offers, as though trying to both help and reassure her. 

"Like that makes a fuckin' difference, Dan, unless he's a fuckin' tomato. He's not gonna burst, any blood's gonna just be pooling around inside him."

The thought is fairly horrific, and Darry looks away for a second so he doesn't throw up. Katy's voice brings him back quickly. "Darry! Get over to Wayne's ankles."

Under Katy's direction, Jonesy and Reilly have spread the tarp, folded to be roughly longer and wider than Wayne, on the cropped hay. "Darry, you're gonna roll Wayne's hip and butt to his left side, I'm gonna take his head and chest, okay?"

Darry panicks. "But what if he's all fucked up and it makes it worse!"

"Do it, Darry!" Katy is screaming at him, and it is thirty seconds for Wayne to get rolled onto the tarp. Wayne wakes briefly and gives that strange new born calf moan, and Katy shushes him, dropping her hands and lips on his head.

The hockey players are white as ghosts, but the blonde one helps Darry lift the tarp at Wayne's feet, while the other and Dan get the top, and Katy runs to put down the back of the Jeep. Darry out loud wishes it were a truck, and Katy's panic is obvious as she says it was the closest thing at hand. Wayne weighs a fucking ton, and it reminds Darry unpleasantly of lifting slaughtered cattle.

As it is, the choice to prop Wayne's feet up or roll his legs seem to be a choice between undesirables, until Dan suggests to remove the back seats. Katy starts dismantling the seats, to the players' loud dismay. Finally, the seats are languishing in the field, and Wayne's body is angled into the back. Darry climbs into the back with Katy, who has knelt so either knee is around Wayne's head, her small hands clamped to his skull to stabilize it. It is only now that Darry realizes she is crying without sobbing and without sound, and he realizes that he's been crying too.

Dan yells that he's going to call ahead to the hospital, which is a fair fucking 30 minute drive, and follow after. Katy raps at the hockey players to drive as slow as possible out of the field. Wayne's body jostles along anyway, his breathing slow and shallow. They make it to the road proper, and the drive to the hospital is one of the worst things Darry can remember in a long time. Not least ways because Katy at some point decides to try to give her brother more air, and starts undoing his shirt cuffs and front buttons, and strange red puddles seem to stretch under Wayne's skin like some weird sci fi flick.

Somehow Wayne escapes needing reconstructive surgery. The weight of the bale has caused a lot of internal bruising, which the doctors are anxious to go in and fix up, but his sturdy farm- toughened body is more or less intact.

It's a week before Wayne is home properly, and a few more before he's out to the barn like normal. It's a full month before he can stoop down beside a cow to place a milk machine on her, and most days that summer he's sprawled on a chair at the produce stand, saying nothing to anyone. Katy calls him an old coot for not taking pain medication, and Darry knows it's testament to that very pain that he says nothing smart back at her.

They get a second cutting baled after a few months, and Wayne drives the tractor, same as usual, but he gives the baler a wide berth. They go down to Modean's after the first night of raking, and Gail offers to put some color back in his cheeks. Wayne only grimaces and knocks back more of his beer. 

The summer moves on.


End file.
